The Radio 4 approach is a curious one. There's no doubt that this will be a classy adaptation given the track record of the team involved: co-producers Jeremy Mortimer (A Tale of Two Cities) and Jonquil Painting, writer Robin Brooks (I, Claudius), and a fine cast including Niamh Cusack, Stephen Rae, Andrew Scott and Henry Goodman. And to listen to the novel should prove easier than reading it on page, where the layers of narration, dialogue and interior monologue blur mischievously.

To broadcast over one day is certainly a ballsy decision. Fittingly it's on Bloomsday, 16 June, the same day as the book's 1904 setting, and will unfold in something close to real time, moving through the day from Leopold Bloom's breakfast of kidneys ("grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine") to Molly Bloom's late-night erotic monologue. But dotting the novel across 15 hours of the schedules on one day makes it even harder to imagine listeners sticking with it than if it were broadcast in one five-and-a-half hour stint.

It's not simply the ginormous time commitment, though that is a consideration; instead of clearing an evening or afternoon, you're on call all day. It's also the dipping in and out of other regular programmes. Bit of Ulysses followed by The Week in Westminster? Another segment after Any Answers and its reliably curious array of callers? Sandwiched around Loose Ends? That noise you can hear is Joyce turning in his grave and cursing.

Why not instead launch with all the Bloomsday fanfare, then broadcast in episodes over a longer period in a regular slot? Or, better still, have the conviction to broadcast the adaptation all in one, as Radio 4 did with eight-and-a-half uninterrupted hours dedicated to a reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on Boxing Day 2000?

I've been asking on Twitter this week about who intends to listen to the whole thing tomorrow as it goes out and, while not the most rigorous scientific research, a pattern clearly emerged: those connected or appearing in the adaptation will be doing so, as you'd expect. Everyone else said they'd be downloading to listen later. Many added that they hadn't got round to Life and Fate yet. Could Ulysses end up being the most unlistened to broadcast of the most unread novel?

These issues arise when radio embraces such immersive events, whether it's Radio 3 giving over a whole week to a composer or Radio 4 filling every drama slot in a week, apart from The Archers, with Life and Fate last September. Much of the value of these projects is in branding: networks showing how flexible they can be for ventures which bolster a sense of their core values and those of their audiences.

So, Radio 4 smartly connects the Ulysses adaptation with other popular programmes and presenters: In Our Time discussed the novel this week; the adaptation will be launched from a brief Saturday Live, and Mark Lawson will be in Dublin to link the segments and consider the novel with guests later in the day. It's a bold, ambitious day, for sure, and one that reminds us what Radio 4 stands for. But will you be listening?

To mark Bloomsday, 16 June, the date Joyce first walked out with his wife to be in 1904 - the year he began his collection of stories, Dubliners – Colm Tóibín revisits the city that has become a sacred place to Joyce lovers